#018, Religion is like chocolate?
RELIGION BITES PODCAST (RB018)
The history of the idea of chocolate is somewhat similar to the history of how we think about religions. Chocolate became chocolate through colonial encounter and appropriation. Without colonialism, we would not talk about chocolate — the same with religion.
A written version of this episode can be found at:
Episode notes
Religion is like chocolate.
I don’t mean this literally.
Religion is not chocolate, and chocolate is not religion. But there are similarities.
The thing we assume chocolate to be was created, developed, and economically controlled by particular European individuals, rulers, and businesses.
And after 500 years of European colonialism in America, it is very hard now to find any form of chocolate that exists beyond what Europeans have made chocolate to be.
This is where the analogy with religion comes in. Religion — in particular, the idea of religion and religions of the world — is equally something that has emerged from similar histories of European colonialism.
